Elizabeth Bolton, a Caldwell Banker residential real estate
broker in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has launched a website called Centers and Squares.On the home page, under the headline Condos in Renovated Churches, she
writes:

“Churches and synagogues converted to condos often
result in dramatic spaces with soaring ceilings, beautiful oversized windows,
and preserved architectural details.A
number of former churches have been turned in condos in Cambridge, Somerville,
and Watertown.Loft buyers will
appreciate the wide open spaces in these reused buildings.”

Scroll down the page and you find photos of eight different
former church buildings, with accompanying listings:

“The church at 101 Third Street in East Cambridge is
one of the oldest church buildings in Cambridge.Built in 1827 as a Unitarian Church it became
the Holy Cross Church in 1940.In 2000
it was converted to four luxury condos.The condos range in size from 1300 to 3160 sq.ft. and sold for $585,000
to $1,300,000.

I worked on the organ in that church in the early 1980’s,
and remember watching a favorite off-set Yankee™ ratchet screwdriver fall
through a hole in the floor, and then waiting a long time to hear it hit bottom.I wonder if a worker found it when they were
demolishing the building’s interior.If
so, I hope he appreciated it – it’s a classic and useful tool that’s impossible
to replace.

Other features noted in Ms. Bolton’s listings include
“heated indoor garage,” and “ceiling heights soar to 60ft.” in one of the
units.The trouble with ceilings that
high is that the Christmas tree costs five grand.But what a great place for a radio-operated
helipcopter – the ideal Christmas gift for a kid (or daddy) living in a
converted organ loft.One of the
properties is called “Bell Tower Place,” another is “The Sanctuary Lofts.”

In my work with the Organ Clearing House, I’ve been in and
out of countless buildings destined to become loft apartments.I can picture the story the instant a
developer introduces himself on the phone.(You’ll accuse me of profiling, but real estate people and church people
have different telephone voices.)“I
bought an old church and I need to sell the organ.”My first question is, “what’s the schedule?”“Demo starts on Wednesday.”Recently we closed a deal in which a large
Möller organ in Buffalo, New York is being given to a church in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, because the developer that purchased the property allowed enough
time before demolition.

Having seen quite a few of these completed projects, I can
tell you that it takes a really skillful architect to make usable comfortable
living spaces from old church buildings.I’ve seen the top four feet of a large gothic stained-glass window
rising from a dining room floor – The
Ascension of Christ from the navel up.I’ve seen a ten-by-ten foot home office with a wood ceiling sloping from
twenty feet on one side to twenty-four on the other.Changing the battery in the smoke alarm is an
ordeal.And I’ve seen a bathtub in a
fourth-floor bathroom, placed in what was the top eight feet of an apse.Picture yourself showering against a
liturgical backdrop.

A grand stone church building in Meriden, Connecticut was
purchased by a comedian who planned to create a comedy club.The belly-gripping name of this inspirational
venue, “God, That’s Funny!”(I’m not
kidding.)The magnificent three-manual
1893 Johnson Organ (Opus 788) has been on the OCH website for years.In response to a recent inquiry, I tried to
track down the owner, who was of course long gone.(I guess God didn’t think it was funny.)A few calls around town revealed that two
different worshipping communities had subsequently purchased the building.I drove through town yesterday hoping to track
down the present owners to see if the organ is still intact.There was a fancy electronic sign out front,
flashing information about weather, time and date, bible study, and Sunday
“Praise!”, but no phone number.A
Google™ search revealed a phone number that rang endlessly with no chance to
leave a message.I guess I should go by
on a Sunday morning.

§

Yet another committee.

We’re all familiar with the traditional list of church
committee: Memorials, Flower, Property, Finance, Education, and Music.Lots of church members think that the
Nominating Committee is the worst assignment because you spend your three-year
stint listening to people explaining why they have to say “NO.”I remember chiming in once along those lines
when I was asked to be on the Nominating Committee.But I think the worst assignment for a church
member is the Dispersement Committee.(Spellcheck says there’s no such word – but I’ve worked with several of
them, so I know it’s true.)These are
typically the last members standing, the most loyal, diehard people in the
pews.By the time the Dispersement
Committee gets down to work, the work of the Dissolution Committee is finished.The corporation has been closed, the
denominational leaders have followed the rules of deconsecrating the property,
the last service has been held, the building has been put on the market, the
congregation has found new spiritual homes (or not), and all that’s left to do
is empty the building.

Anyone who’s been involved with the life of a church can picture
the list:

·533 hymnals

·346 pew bibles

·7 rolling coat racks with Christmas Pageant
costumes

·217 metal folding chairs, some with broken legs

·22 folding banquet tables

·26 adult choir robes, 33 child choir robes

·433 monogrammed teacups with saucers

·275 ten-inch dinner plates (ivory with green
edge stripe)

·grand piano

·4 upright pianos (one blue, one black, two
white)

·58 small bottles Elmer’s™ glue

·6 framed 8x10 “Smiling Jesus”

·7 boxes elbow macaroni, 2 cans gold spray paint

·3 step ladders (6-foot, 8-foot, 12-foot), poor
condition

·1 Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ, 49 ranks, 1937 (G.
Donald Harrison)

When a church has reached this stage, about the best thing
that can happen is a crew arriving to dismantle the organ.When the organ has been sold and renovation has
been planned, the members of the Dispersement Committee take solace in knowing
that some last breath of their beloved church will blow its inspiration across
another congregation. Committee members arrive early in the morning with family
photos they’ve taken off the walls in their homes – photos of their parents’
weddings and funeral, their children’s baptisms and confirmations, or the
sanctuary decked out in Christmas finery.In each photo, that organ is standing proudly in the background, a
monument to a century or more of parish life – celebrations, tragedies,
triumphs, and disappointments.

As we thunder through the nearly abandoned building setting
up scaffolding, building pipe trays, and unpacking tools, taking down the first
façade pipes, we see people sitting quietly in the rear pews with tears
streaming down their cheeks.

§

A movable feast.

Through the disappointment and sadness of the loss of a
church, the organ lives on, and it’s fun to be able to share a couple stories
in which the relocation of an organ brought a little light to a story.

In the middle of 2011, Christ Episcopal Church in South
Barre, Massachusetts closed its doors, and most of the remaining parishioners
transferred their memberships to St. Francis’ Church in nearby Holden.The Diocese of Western Massachusetts
contacted us to place the organ in a new home, and after only a few brief
conversations, someone had a bright idea.(As my colleague Amory often quips, “Light dawned over
Marblehead!”)The outdated and
malfunctioning electronic instrument in the Chancel at St. Francis’ Church
needed only a little push to make way for the quick installation of the lovely
1910 Hook & Hastings organ (Opus 2344).How lovely for the members of Christ Church to be welcomed into a new
congregation with the opportunity to bring a beautiful and living piece of
their church with them.It took a little
over three weeks to make the move, and as I write, the relocated organ is to be
dedicated in a recital by Robert Barney the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Some twenty years earlier, the First Unitarian Church in
Woburn, Massachusetts closed.The
three-manual 1870 E. & G.G. Hook organ (Opus 553) was sold to a church in
Berlin, Germany.The money from that
sale was entrusted to church member Charley Smith, who salted it away confident
that a good use for the funds would come up someday.And in 1995, the Stoneham (Massachusetts, two
miles from Woburn) Unitarian Church closed. The two manual 1868 E. & G.G. Hook
organ (Opus 466) was placed in storage, and advertised in a U.U.A. District
Newsletter as available, “free to a good home.”

The Follen Community Church (UUA) in Lexington,
Massachusetts (five miles in the other direction from Woburn) was studying the
home-built instrument in its historic sanctuary when their Minister noticed the
bit about the Hook organ and handed it off to the chair of the committee.It didn’t take long for the arrangements to
be made and the Bishop Organ Company was engaged to renovate and install the
organ in Lexington.Charley Smith got
wind of all this, and presented the Follen Church with the funds from the sale
of the Woburn organ to support the organ’s maintenance and to assist in the
presentation of annual organ recitals.Charley
passed away before the project was complete, but his widow and several past
members of the Woburn church were in attendance when the Stoneham organ was
dedicated in its new home.Two organs,
three Massachusetts towns, one European city, and a lot of good will in the
face of disappointment.

§

The Sistine Condos

The New Yorker magazine
is an intelligent literary periodical, packed chock-full of commentary,
fiction, poetry, reviews, and in-depth feature stories.It’s published weekly so it’s difficult to
keep up.I’ve subscribed online which
means I have a year of issues archived on my iPad.I think that combination of content and
format is the ideal companion for long flights.I often fly long round trips over a single weekend for consultation
engagements, and love to spend that time catching up.The New
Yorker is definitely a product of the American Northeast, and it’s possible
that some of you may disagree with the editorial content.But anyone who follows the arts in this
country would do well to read the opening ten pages or so each week.“Goings On About Town” is a regular feature
that announces events in popular and classical music, museum exhibitions,
dance, opera, recitals, theater, and cinema.Each week’s issue gives a succinct overview of what’s happening in the
forefront of American culture.

Along with the serious, thoughtful, and often humorous
prose, each issue’s cover is an original artwork that comments on some timely
issue, and each issue is bestrewn with delightful, often provocative
cartoons.Anyone who has walked the
sidewalks of New York City is familiar with the ubiquitous double-decker tour
bus.The upper deck is typically open,
and they careen around the city giving tourists a neck-snapping, neck-craning
view of the city.One New Yorker cover showed two of those
behemoths from recognizable rival firms, dressed up as nineteeth-century
two-level frigates under full sail, fire broadsides at each other as they
passed through Times Square.Another
showed Aesop’s Hare hailing a taxi while the Tortoise descended the steps into
the subway.Perfect.

When this cartoon appeared in the September 10, 2012 issue
of The New Yorker, it caught my eye.In fact, it caught more than my eye – it struck
a nerve, and took my breath away.I’ve
seen decorated Victorian organ cases that were spray-painted over (sky blue)
because a long-deceased rector thought the organ detracted from his
preaching.I’ve seen historic organs
wrecked because alarm company employees tramped across the windchests as they
stapled wires in place.(I hope all
those nasty pipes cut their ankles.)I’ve visited Diocesan warehouses and seen the Procession of Saints,
orphaned by demolished buildings and bedecked in bubble-wrap, waiting for
another church to offer them a home.And
I’ve seen frescos concealed by new plaster and paint because there wasn’t
enough money to do it right.

It’s unthinkable that the Sistine Chapel would ever be
subdivided into condominium residences, and Michelangelo’s masterpiece ceiling
painted over.We’ve seen otherwise
mild-mannered and rational people crashing across the waves of the open ocean
in rubber boats, chasing after Russian and Japanese whaling ships.Imagine the phalanx of art historians and
preservationists who would circle their wagons around the Vatican if word got
out!

But every day, in many countries, beautiful church buildings
and their decorations are falling.Aging
congregations can no longer support the grand buildings left for them by
previous generations.A typical church
sanctuary (60’ x 40’ x 40’) encloses about ahundred thousand cubic feet.If
the congregation dwindles to a hundred people, that’s a thousand cubic feet to
heat for each congregant.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

In the wind…

September, 2013

The Start of a
Century

At 10:24 am on October 15, 1947, Air Force Test Pilot Chuck
Yaeger flew the X-1 experimental aircraft faster than the speed of sound.That’s 761.2 miles per hour at 59-degrees
Fahrenheit.It was quite a technological
achievement.You have to generate a lot
of power to move a machine that fast.But there was a spiritual and metaphysical aspect to that feat.Engineers were confident that they could
produce sufficient power, but they were not sure that a machine would survive
the shock wave generated by a machine outrunning its own noise.They supposed that the plane would vaporize,
or at least shatter, scattering Yaeger-dust across the landscape.

In his swaggering ghost-written autobiography, Yaeger, he casually mentions that he had
broken ribs (probably garnered in a barroom brawl) and had to rig a broomstick
to close the cockpit hatch.He took off,
flew the daylights out of the thing, and landed, pretty much just like any
other flight.By the noise, and by the
cockpit instruments, he knew he had broken the sound barrier, but to Yaeger’s
undoubted pleasure and later comfort, the worries of the skeptics proved untrue.

Invisible barriers.

Remember Y2K?As the
final weeks of 1999 ticked by, residents of the world wondered if we would
survive the magical mystical moment between December 31, 1999, and January 1,
2000.Of course, the world has survived
some twenty-five changes of millennia since we started to count time, but this
would be the first time with computers.The myth that computers would not be able to count to 2000 had us
hyperventilating as we ran to ATM to grab as much cash as we could.People refused to make plans that would have
them aloft in airplanes at that horrible moment, supposing that cockpit
computers would fail and planes would fall from the sky.The collapse of the world’s economy was
predicted.Public utilities would cease
to function.Nuclear power plants would
overheat, and soufflés would fall.

As the clock ticked closer to midnight on New Year’s Eve, we
waited breathlessly.Fifteen, fourteen,
thirteen…sometimes it causes me to
tremble…eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven…all
good children go to heaven…four, three, two one…

Humpf.

I have no idea how the venerable astronomers settled on how
to organize the calendar and define our concept of time.I imagine a committee of bearded and wizened wise
men gathered in a pub, throwing darts at a drawing of a clock.However they did it, they didn’t fool
us.Cell phones, ATMs, airplanes, power
plants, railroads, and thank goodness, icemakers just kept on running.However accurately that moment was defined,
it was meaningless – a randomly identified milestone amongst the multitude.

Then we worried about what we call those years.The oughts?The Ohs?Shifting from
ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine to oh-one, oh-two, oh-three seemed
impossible.I managed, and so did you.

Centennials.

The twentieth century started without the computer induced
hoopla, but I suppose that our heroes Widor, Puccini, Saint-Saens, Dvorak, and
Thomas Edison watched in suspense as the clock ticked past the witching hour.The real upheaval happened over thirteen
years later.On May 29, 1913, Ballets Russe danced the premier of Igor
Stravinski’s Rite of Spring at
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.Stravinski
had used traditional and familiar instruments and all the same notes that
people were used to, but the way he arranged the tonalities, the maniacal
organization of rhythms, the angular melodies, and the radical orchestration
set the place in an uproar.The bassoon
that played those haunting melismatic opening solos could have been used to
play continuo in a Bach Cantata the same day.Legend has it that the audience couldn’t contain itself and there was
wild disturbance.How wonderful for a
serious musical composition to stir people up like that.I haven’t seen people so worked up since the
Boston Bruins failed to win the Stanley Cup.

Everything’s up to
date in Kansas City.

About five weeks before Stravinsky tried to ruin the theater
in Paris, the Woolworth Building designed by Cass Gilbert was opened on Lower
Broadway in New York, April 24, 1913.Like Stravinsky, Cass Gilbert used a traditional vocabulary – the
prickles and arches given us by the Gothic Cathedrals.But Rogers & Hammerstein’s “gone and
built a skyscraper seven stories high” was not as high as a building ought to
go.Cass Gilbert went fifty-seven
stories – 792 feet – the building remained the tallest in the world until
1930.Gilbert hung those classic Gothic
features on a high-tech structure and startled the world of architecture and
commerce.

Besides the technical achievement of supporting a massive
structure that tall, the building had thirty-four new-fangled elevators.The engineers executing Gilbert’s design had
to figure out to get water more than seven hundred feet up.Just think of that, pulling up to the curb in
a shiny new 1913 Chalmers Touring Car, and stepping in an elevator to go up
fifty-seven stories.Those folks in
Kansas City would have flipped their wigs.

The Woolworth building is still there a hundred years
later.Like Rite of Spring, it’s a staple in our lives, and it seems a little
less radical than it did a century ago.After all, a few blocks away at 8 Spruce Street, by the foot of the
Brooklyn Bridge, the new tallest residential building in the Americas
(seventy-six stories and 876 feet), designed by Frank Gehry, towers like a maniacal
grove of polished corkscrews.Gehry took
the functional aesthetic of the glass-and-steel Seagram Building (375 Park
Avenue, designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, built in 1958), and
gave it a cubist ethic by twisting the surfaces to create the signature
rippling effects.

How poetic that the Woolworth Building and 8 Spruce Street,
opened almost exactly a century apart, stand just a few blocks apart, trying to
out-loom each other.I took these photos
of them standing in the same spot on City Hall Plaza.

Frank Woolworth made a fortune in retail, the Sam Walton of
his day.F.W. Woolworth stores dotted
the country, making goods of reasonable quality available to residents of small
towns.However, I doubt that anything
sold in his stores would have been found in his houses.His principal residence, also designed by
Cass Gilbert, was at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 80th Street in
Manhattan, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Among dozens of priceless artifacts was a
large three-manual Aeolian Organ.Woolworth was one of Aeolian’s prime customers, and rare among that
heady clientele, he could play the organ.

His estate Winfield (the
“W” of F. W. Woolworth) on Long Island boasted the first full-length
thirty-two-foot Double Open Diapason to be built for a residence organ.Now that would shake your champagne glasses.

Woolworth’s funeral was held in the Fifth Avenue
mansion.Frank Taft, artistic director
of the Aeolian Company, was on the organ bench.

The Twenty-First
Century Pipe Organ

There’s a lot going on here in lower Manhattan.South of Union Square at 14th
Street, Broadway stops its disruptive diagonal path across the city, and
assumes a more reliable north-south orientation, forming the border between
Greenwich East Village and Greenwich West Village.On the corner of 10th and Broadway
stands Grace Church (Episcopal).Three
blocks west on the corner of 10th and Fifth Avenue stands Church of
the Ascension (Episcopal).Both are
“Gothicky” buildings – Grace is whitish with a tall pointed spire while
Ascension is brownish with a stolid square tower with finials.Both have pretty urban gardens.Both are prosperous active places.And both have radical new twenty-first
century organs.

Taylor & Boody of Staunton, Virginia are coming toward
completion of the installation of their Opus 65 at Grace Church where Patrick
Allen is the Organist and Master of the Choristers.Pascal Quoirin of Saint-Didier, Provence,
France has completed installation of a marvelous instrument at Church of the
Ascension where Dennis Keene is Organist and Choirmaster.

Both of these organs have as their cores large
tracker-action organs based on historic principles – and Principals.And both have large romantic divisions
inspired by nineteenth and twentieth-century ideals.Both are exquisite pieces of architecture and
furniture, and both have been built by blending the highest levels of
traditional craftsmanship with modern materials and methods.

At Church of the Ascension you can play the core organ from
a three-manual mechanical keydesk and the entire instrument from a separate
four-manual electric console.At Grace
Church, the whole organ plays from a four-manual detached mechanical console,
and contacts under the keyboards allow access to electric couplers and the few
high-pressure windchests that operate on electric action.

A more detailed account of the organ at Church of the
Ascension has been published, and no doubt, we can expect one about the Grace
Church organ – so I’ll limit myself to general observations, and let the
organbuilders and musicians involved speak for themselves.I admire the courage and inventiveness
exhibited in the creation of these two remarkable instruments.

I expect that purists from both ends of the spectrum will be
critical, or at least skeptical of these efforts to bridge the abyss.But I raise the question of whether purism,
or conservative attitudes are the best things for the future of our
instrument.We study history, measure
pipes, analyze metal compositions, and study the relationships between ancient
instruments and the music written for them.We have to do that, and we must do that.

After finishing the restoration and relocation of a
beautiful organ built by E. & G.G. Hook (Opus 466, 1868) for the Follen
Community Church in Lexington, Massachusetts, I wrote an essay in the
dedication book under the title, The Past
Becomes the Future.In it I wrote
about the experience of working on such a fine instrument, marveling at the
precision of the workers’ pencil lines, and the vision of conceiving an
instrument that would be vital and exciting a hundred-forty years later.I saw that project as a metaphor for a
combination of eras. And I intended the
double meaning for the word becomes.The past not only transfers to the future,
but it enhances the future.I could
carry the play on words further by misquoting the title of a popular movie, Prada Becomes the Devil!

Another tense of that use of the word become is familiar to us from Duprés Fifteen Antiphons, I am black but comely, O ye daughters of
Jerusalem.We don’t typically use
the word that way in conversation, but if you read in a Victorian poem, “she of
comely leg,” you’d know exactly what it meant!

Speaking of the
Ballet…

Recently, renowned organist Diane Belcher mentioned on
Facebook that the recording she made in ­­­­­­1999 (JAV 115) on the
Rosales/Glatter-Götz organ in the Claremont United Church of Christ, Claremont,
California has been released on iTunes.Buy it.This is a smashing
recording of wonderful playing on a really thrilling organ.It’s a big three-manual instrument with
mechanical action and a wide variety of tone color.The recording has long been a favorite of
mine – I transferred it from the original CD to my iPhone and listen to it in
the car frequently.

The first piece on the recording is Tiento de Batalla sobre la Balletto del Granduca by Timothy Tikker,
was commissioned by the organbuilder to showcase the organ’s extraordinary
collection of reed voices.The piece
opens with a statement of a measured dance, familiar to organists who grew up
listening to the recording of E. Power Biggs, and proceeds in a dignified
fashion from verse to verse.I picture a
large stone hall lit by torches, with heavily costumed people in parade.But about three minutes in, things start to
go wrong.It’s as though someone threw
funky mushrooms into one of the torches.An odd note pokes through the stately procession – you can forgive it
because you hardly notice it.But oops,
there’s another – and another – and pretty soon the thing has morphed into a series
of maniacal leaps and swoops as the reeds get more and more bawdy.Tikker established a traditional frame on which
he hung a thrilling, sometimes terrifying essay on the power of those Rosales
reeds.

New threads on old
bones.

·Igor Stravinski used an ancient vocabulary of
notes and sounds to create revolutionary sounds.The same old sharps and flats, rhythmic
symbols, and every-good-boy-deserves-fudge were rejigged to start a revolution.

·Cass Gilbert used five-hundred year old
iconography to decorate a technological wonder.

·Frank Gehry gave the familiar skyscraper a new
twist.

·Taylor & Boody and Pascal Quoirin have
morphed seventeenth and eighteenth languages into twenty-first century marvels.

·Timothy Tikker painted for us a portrait of the
march of time.

Organists are very good at lamenting the passage of the old
ways.Each new translation of the bible
or the Book of Common Prayer is cause
for mourning.I won’t mention the
introduction of new hymnals.(Oops!)

We recite stoplists as if they were the essence of the pipe
organ.We draw the same five stops every
time we play the same piece on a different organ.And we criticize our colleagues for starting
a trill on the wrong note.

I don’t think Igor Stravinski cared a whit about which note
should start a trill.

The end of the world
as we know it.Together we have witnessed many doomsday predictions.I’ve not paid close attention to the science
of it, but it seems to me that the Mayan Calendar has come and gone in the news
several times in the last few years.A
predicted doomsday passes quietly and someone takes another look at the
calendar and announces a miscalculation.Maybe the world will end.If it
does, I suppose it will end for all of us so the playing field will remain
equal.

But we can apply this phrase, the end of the world as we know it, to positive developments in our
art and craft as the twenty-first century matures.Your denomination introduces a new hymnal –
the end of the world as you know it.So,
learn the new hymnal, decide for yourself what are the strong and weak points,
and get on with it.

Chuck Yaeger broke the sound barrier, and kept flying faster
and faster.On October 15, 2012, at the
age of 89, Chuck Yaeger reenacted the feat, flying in a brand new F-15
accompanied by a Navy Captain.But
imagine this, it was the same day that Austrian Felix Baumgartner became the
first person to break the sound barrier without at airplane!He jumped from a helium balloon at an
altitude of twenty-four miles, and achieved a speed of 843.6 miles per hour as
he fell before deploying his parachute.Both men lived to see another day.

A Taylor & Boody organ with multiple pressures and
expressions, powerful voices on electric actions, and seething symphonic
strings – the end of the world as we know it.Embrace the thoughtfulness and creativity that begat it.And for goodness sake, stop using archaic words
like comely and begat.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

It’s high summer and Americans are at the playground.
Amusement parks are full, beaches are packed, and the highways leading to the
beaches are global-warming-nightmares – you can see the heat waves shimmering
above the lines of cars. Having driven from Boston to our house in Maine on a
recent Friday afternoon my wife commented that on the highway she’d seen a lot
of vacations she didn’t want to be on. These were the station wagons bristling
with bicycles packed with coolers, kids, and dogs, everyone with grim
expressions on their faces (especially eighty-mile-per-hour Dad), determined to
have fun.

“…Daddy’s rich,”

Three-miles-per-gallon motor-homes the size of troop
carriers, topped with satellite dishes, towing trailers full of motorbikes and
bass boats with 250 HP outboards, spew black exhaust through National Parks,
idyllic countryside, and major cities alike. Along with all that gear are more
gas cans than a landscaping crew. You see three or four such rigs with
consecutive numbers on their license plates lumbering along in convoy. It’s as
though we can measure fun by the price of our toys or by the amount of fuel we
burn. You can just hear eighty-mile-per-hour Dad shouting, “I’m paying six
hundred dollars a day for this and you’re going to enjoy yourself.”

It’s especially hard when someone’s fun interrupts someone
else’s. You’re sitting on the rocks with a friend, engrossed in conversation
and watching the tide advance past your ankles toward your knees when a
squadron of jet-skis comes screaming along, weaving and jumping over each
others’ wakes, the riders having as much fun as possible considering the
relatively small amount of fuel they burn. Finally they’re gone, and a hint of
two-cycle (gas mixed with oil) exhaust lingers on the evening breeze.

“…and your mama’s
good lookin’,”

We’ve dieted and electrolyzed so we can expose maximum
surface area to ultra-violet rays without embarrassment, and we pack our natty
straw bags with chemical stews to ward off those rays and legions of flying
pests. Marketers know how to capture the leisure dollar. Have you ever noticed
how pottery studios, art galleries, and t-shirt meccas congregate near the
vacation spots? Once in the elevator in a city hotel I heard a woman say to her
friend, “stuff in Ann Taylor just looks so much better when you’re on
vacation.”

“…fish are jumpin’,” (sorry
to be out of order!)

Reflect on those fancy white fishing boats you see on
trailers on the highway – two big outboard motors at $25,000 each, electronic
fish-finders, hundred-gallon fuel tanks, and fishing rods galore. The first ten
fish you catch are worth $6000 per pound. It
doesn’t get any better than this.

Perhaps The Diapason isn’t
the place for a global-warming tirade, or a cynical rant on American
consumerism or vanity. And perhaps it’s too much of a cliché to repeat, “The
Best Things in Life are Free.” But how much are we missing when we indulge in
this expensive and noisy fun? And what are we teaching our children about priorities?

While all this is going on we wonder about the increasing
difficulty of funding symphony orchestras, maintaining collections of art,
presenting great theater, and yes fellow readers, funding pipe organs. As a
society we seem to be able to imagine a world without art, without music,
without theater – but rich in football. This is proven by school-board budgets
across the nation. Is there one town in America whose school committee cut
sports programs in favor of the arts? (If you know of one please let me know.)

Here’s a little collection of thoughts that reflect these
priorities. Some are my own, some are from bumper stickers:

Could we find statistics to prove that more kids have
missed soccer practice in order to get to choir rehearsal than missed
choir to get to soccer?

How many carefully prepared Youth Choir anthems have
been compromised because of the hockey team’s Sunday morning ice time?

It would be a great day when the Defense Department
had to have bake sales to buy warships and the schools had all the money
they needed.

How can kids learn about the world around them when
they’re watching videos every time they get in the car?

When you see three teenagers walking down the street,
all talking on cell phones, do you suppose they’re on a conference call
with each other? (I was once riding the Amtrak Acela between Boston and
New York with an unnecessarily loud cell-phoner a few rows back. In each
call he had to announce, “I’m on the Acela to New York.” His third
interlocutor said, “So am I.” My fellow
passengers and I knew long before they did that they were both in the same
car with us. Much laughter.)

If young children are up at the crack of dawn and
teenagers want to sleep until noon, why does high school start at 7:10 am
and elementary school at 8:45?

As I write, the early-morning
radio is playing Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria
one floor up. I hear it only vaguely in the distance but recognize it in
the first few seconds (I can name that tune in one note!) because I first knew
it as the accompanist of my high school’s Concert Choir more than thirty years
ago. (I doubt that the same choir would be singing sacred music in Latin today,
but that’s another story.) And as a high school student, it was my usual
routine to go to the First Congregational Church (a three-manual Fisk organ)
after school to practice for a couple hours. I was organist for a large
Catholic church that many of my classmates were forced to attend. How’s that
for being cool? But I have many friends and colleagues who grew up with similar
priorities. As students at Oberlin in the mid-seventies my friends and I argued
about whether Herbert von Karajan or George Solti played better Beethoven. Had
they been available we would have been trading Symphony Orchestra cards in lieu
of baseball cards. (Come to think of it, that would be a fun virtual game,
trading an oboe player for a cellist to build the strongest orchestra.)

I am not saying that singing in
the church’s Youth Choir is the most important activity for a young person. And
I am not saying that boating is not fun – those who know me know how much I
enjoy it. But the bumper sticker about the bake sale gives pause for thought.
And it seems that ballot propositions for tax increases in support of the
schools are often voted down by an older generation that feels they’ve done
their part. In reality, the older we get the more we depend on the young. We
notice the first time our physician is younger than we are. One of the big
social impacts of John Kennedy’s presidency was that so many Americans were
suddenly older than their president. I know many people who felt that change
very clearly. So what will it be like when we have a president who grew up
playing video games instead of practicing the piano?

When I was a kid…

We all know the old saw: the old
uncle rattles on about walking ten miles to school every day and about how easy
kids have it now. But I’ll offer another twist. When I was a kid, a community
of generous and encouraging organists welcomed me. They took me to concerts and
organ-shop Open Houses, and invited me to dinner parties. I felt privileged to
witness, even participate in heady conversations. Along with my routine of
practicing and lessons and the occasional recital, these experiences were
important to my early understanding of what it could mean to be an organist. If
you ever have an opportunity to invite a young person to an AGO event or a
concert, make the most it knowing how much impact it could have on a young
artist.

You can also make the most of your
own opportunities. The parish organist has few chances to hear others play –
after all, everyone is at work on Sunday mornings. But when you’re vacationing,
take a look at what’s going on in local churches. If you’re in a big city,
there’s every chance you could hear something special – something that would
inspire your work in the coming year, something you never heard before.

Bomb scare.

Shortly after the nine-eleven
attacks I was leaving a job site and driving out of New York City with a couple
trays of organ pipes in the back of my van. Leaving Manhattan, I went north on
FDR Drive along the East River and got onto the ramp system of the Triborough
Bridge to head back to New England. Let me set the scene in case you’ve never
had that pleasure. The Triborough Bridge is actually of collection of three of
four bridges (it’s hard to tell) and myriad ramps that connect the boroughs of
Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. According to the New York State Department of
Transportation, the bridge carries some 200,000 vehicles each day.

I was stopped by a State Trooper
on the Triborough ramp (no I wasn’t speeding, they were stopping every vehicle)
who kindly asked if I’d open the rear of my vehicle. He took a look at a rank
of Principal and a rank of Trumpet pipes and asked, “What’re those?” My honest
response revealed that the Trooper was likely not an AGO member. I offered to
demonstrate and he invited me out of my car. With a hot gritty city wind
blowing through my erstwhile hair and the dramatic Manhattan skyline in the
background, I picked up an eight-footer, pointed it skyward, and blew into its
mouth. It was fortunate that I had a copy of The Diapason in the car so I could share photos of organs that
featured pipes similar to those in the car.
I was allowed to pass.

Last month we spent a college
commencement weekend in Providence, Rhode Island. That Saturday morning (May 26) we picked up
the Providence Journal (colloquially
know as Pro-Jo) in which I read an article that reminded me of my Triborough
experience. The headline was, “PIPE ORGAN AT CENTER OF SCHOOL BOMB SCARE.”
Written by John Castellucci, the article began:

The suspicious-looking object that
forced the evacuation of Tolman High School on Thursday wasn’t a pipe bomb – it
was part of a pipe organ.

Tolman Principal Frederick W. Silva
said yesterday that a couple of students had pried the pipe loose from the
school’s circa 1927 pipe organ, which was walled off in a recent renovation of
the high school auditorium and forgotten.

Tolman’s 1300 students were sent
home and state fire marshal’s bomb squad was called in after a teacher spotted
the object in a second-floor locker and alerted school officials.

Bomb squad members couldn’t figure
out what the object was. They destroyed it as a precaution, applying a small
explosive charge.

Because the detonation wasn’t
followed by a bigger explosion, officials concluded that the object probably
wasn’t a bomb.

The preservationist in me is
concerned that the bomb squad may have failed to document the provenance,
material, and dimensions of the pipe before taking such a rash action. The
article went on:

…But because it looked so sinister,
Pawtucket police officials asked the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms to get involved, handling the fragments over to a BATF agent late Thursday
afternoon.

I’m sorry to report that BATF was
apparently also unable to identify the object. The mystery was solved when the
two students involved (both boys) confessed their deed. They were suspended for
ten days. Mr. Castellucci concludes:

…Their motive for taking the pipe
organ part? “What they found out was they could make noises by blowing up into
it,” Silva said.